Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity Stuart Munro-Hay

1970). Some of the largest extensions suggested for the kingdom seem unlikely; Doresse, 
for example (1971: 84), includes among `the largest Aksumite ports' not only Adulis but 
Deire, on the coast at the Bab al-Mandeb, and also notes (p. 90) Mathew's statement that 
a structure excavated at Amoud south of Berbera suggested Aksumite building work. 
Such ideas, probably based on the Monumentum Adulitanum account of the campaigns of 
an Aksumite king, cannot yet be confirmed.  
The Akkele Guzay and Agame area seems to be distinguished from the western Tigray 
sites by differences in pottery and other elements. From the tentative observations of 
Francis Anfray (1974), it seems, from the cluster of sites on the north-south route from 
Qohayto to Agula, Degum, and even to Nazret, that this eastern `province' may have 
become the most prosperous in later Aksumite times. Aksum and the sites of the west, 
from Addi Dahno to Henzat and the Yeha region, may have enjoyed prosperity in the pre-
Christian period (many stelae are associated with the sites), but this compared 
unfavourably with the east later on. In suc h a case, Aksum may, even by the fifth and 
sixth centuries, have retained its position more by its prestige as the royal, eponymous 
city of the kingdom than by any continuing special merit in its situation. Possibly the 
Aksumites' expansion to Adulis, opening the western region to an already-established 
(pre-Aksumite?) trading system between the eastern highlands and the Red Sea, reflected 
in trading terms more favourably on the eastern towns, and in some ways made the city's 
own place in the system more tenuous. Even by the beginning of the second century 
Koloë was `the first market for ivory', only three days from Adulis. Possibly the end 
result was that the eastern towns grew richer, whilst the remoter west, though the site of 
the capital, participated le ss in the new influx of wealth.  
  
3. The Development of Aksum; an Interpretation 
 
A different, and extremely interesting, interpretation of Aksumite history was proposed in 
a recent paper by Joseph Michels (1986; revised 1988), who conducted surveys in the 
Aksum-Yeha region in 1974. His conclusions can be compared with the historical outline 
proposed below (at the end of Ch. 2: 4)||huh? no 2-4||. He identified seven historical 
phases in the area, from the end of the Late Neolithic through the pre-Aksumite South 
Arabian period to Late Aksumite, c.700BC-1000AD. By studying the spatial 
configuration of settlements, which were classified according to size and the types of 
structures observed (without excavation), Michels identified periodic changes in the 
settlement pattern, and, assuming that these signified shifts in the political and economic 
spheres, endeavoured to extrapolate to the historical record. Pottery and obsidian 
collections were made, the latter providing Michel's dating.  
As a result of his studies, Michels identified three pre-Aksumite phases (Early, Middle 
and Late) dating from 700/400/150 BC, and three Aksumite phases with the same 
divisions, dating from 150/450/800 AD, with the Post-Aksumite from 1000AD. The 

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earliest phases are of some interest, as Michels' paper represents almost the first progress 
towards defining the sort of social structure in existence in Ethiopia before and during the 
period of South Arabian contacts. Michels found that his analyses suggested for the 
earliest period indigenous occupation at only village or hamlet level, with no special 
preference for situation in one or other of the ecological zones he identified. In contrast, 
the `South Arabian' settlement pattern was identifiable by stone structures on high ground 
in proximity to both the fertile ploughlands and the alluvial valleys susceptible of being 
cultivated by using South Arabian irrigation techniques. Michels sees this primary 
experiment in Ethiopia as developing in the second pre-Aksumite phase from 400BC to a 
much more dominant South Arabian character; "They were no longer simply intrusive 
within a predominantly indigenous political and economic environment, but had 
profoundly altered the economic, demographic, and political landscape". He identifies 
four large South Arabian centres emerging at the expense of the former hamlets —  "the 
traditional autonomy of hamlet and village gives way to the more complex governmental 
systems and sociopolitical stratification associated with large, nucleated settlements, 
institutionalized religion, irrigation management, and long-distance trade".  
It is evident that there is no place here for the pre-Aksumite Ethiopian D'MT monarchy 
(
Ch. 4: 1
). Although Michels emphasises that his first South Arabian period (in which 
linguistic and palaeographic studies locate the Ethiopian and South Arabian inscriptions) 
was not necessarily an attempt to politically dominate the region, but just to exploit it 
agriculturally, he does say that the colonists "did not have to confront and compete with 
an indigenous political adversary comparable in organizational complexity to the kind of 
polities then common in South Arabia". But this is just what the D'MT monarchy is 
suggested to have been, even though it evidently shared some South Arabian cultural 
tendencies. We may instead postulate that Ethiopians, under the control of the D'MT 
monarchy and its successors, lived in some of the communities identified in Michels' 
second period, rather than apart from them in the "small villages" to which he assigns 
them. Further, it is difficult to imagine that the second period could have lasted so long as 
from 400-150BC.  
Whatever the case, it is easy to agree with Michels' idea that after the South Arabian 
colonial zenith (or that of the D'MT monarchy), the earlier pattern of scattered villages 
and hamlets recurs. This is scarcely surprising, since whichever dominant power was in 
control, it evidently disappeared, and with it all signs of its political supremacy. There are 
no large nucleated communities or religious sanctuaries (nor, one might add, are there 
any inscriptions). Michels hypothesises that in this period of decentralisation Yeha alone 
remained a centre for "an elite refugee community within a South Arabian cultural 
enclave, now largely isolated from the economic and political landscape of the region as 
a whole". This period is supposed to have continued until 150AD; its latter part is 
contemporary with some of the early material found by the latest excavations at Aksum 
(Munro-Hay 1989), and well post-dates the current favoured date for the evidence from 
the Periplus (
Ch. 2: 2
).  
After 150AD, in Michels' Early Aksumite phase, changes in the settlement pattern are 
again noted. Michels suggests three levels of organisation. Small-scale chiefdoms appear, 

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